From the course: Social Media Video Strategy: Weekly Bites

Video's role in content marketing - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Social Media Video Strategy: Weekly Bites

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Video's role in content marketing

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- In this chapter, we're going to talk all about how video fits within content marketing strategy. As you're probably aware, traditional marketing is all about how products and services are promoted in the marketplace. When we take a look at content marketing, though, it's a little different. Content marketing is strategically creating and distributing valuable content to a clearly defined audience. It involves the art of communicating without the direct prospect of selling. So, instead of pitching your products or services, you're actually delivering packaged content that engages your audience and helps to establish brand loyalty. The goal is to ultimately get people to go beyond passive consumption and into deeper, more active engagement. But how? Well, video isn't one-size-fits-all. You use different types of videos in different circumstances and in different phases of the marketing strategy. Each video type requires different production values and are different target lengths and should be distributed differently. We're not going to explore every video type, but let's look at some main categories. So, in the previous chapter, I showed you this list. Let's take a look at this list in terms of several metrics. As you can see, we're looking at a number of different types of videos as well as what stage you use them in, how long they should be, the level of production value, and so on. I know this graph is a lot to take in all at once, but let's break it down. Let's first look at the column called Stage of Content Consumption. To better understand what this means, let me briefly show you a diagram which shows a funnel of content consumption. As you can see, at the top of the funnel is awareness, then consideration, then decision, then retention. Your audience is often at very different stages of connecting with your brand, so it's important to align your strategy with this in mind. So, as you can see, at the top of the funnel is awareness. Videos in this phase are often short and punchy and use higher production value. It's here that you spend the most effort to make things look great in the shortest amount of time because your audience needs to be baited. You need to capture their attention. These contain things like promos and explainers and best of compilations and performances. The next stage is consideration where you've already captured your audience's attention, and they're ready to learn more. You can usually get away with lower production values at this point and can focus on content that is a little bit longer, a bit more informative, and allows the audience to dig deeper. These contain things like vlogs, product demos, customer stories, educational videos, and so on. Basically, this is where you inspire audiences to learn more about your brand. Next is decision. This is where your audience responds to a call to action or actually buys your service or product. Videos that spur this type of action are often rooted in more inspirational or educational content. It's where buyers connect more closely to the brand by listening to customer testimonials or tuning in for longer educational content like webinars. You need to be sure that videos at this phase are presented well, but production values usually fall somewhere in the middle. Again, these are things like customer stories, educational videos, webinars, and more, all of the videos that drive home the value of the brand to convert customers. Finally, you have retention. These videos are to keep your existing customers happy as well as to get them to possibly buy in on more products or services. Videos can be a little longer, a little more detailed, and assume a higher level of familiarity and expertise with your brand. Usually, production value can be fairly low as long as the content is good. These are things like live videos, interviews, Q&As, behind the scenes, and how-to videos, all things that are appealing to existing customers. So, if you look at the master chart again, you can see that, in general, we have the shortest videos with the higher production values in awareness and the longer videos with the lowest production values in retention with a bit of a sliding scale in between. There are exceptions to these general rules, but the point is that each video has a place and a purpose, and you should figure that out before promoting it. Also, keep in mind that content marketing is generally a pull strategy not a push strategy. That is, you create content, not ads, and it is that content that leads to action.

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